Danskcolin: Saturday May 3rd 2025 "Do you have, like, a billion 'insta' pics where you're 'stuffing yourself' in some restaurant?"

Yes, friends, does YOUR restaurant food feature "largely" in your instagram 'posts'? And if so, maybe your WAISTLINE figures "largely" too, a bit too largely probably haha!!!

Only kidding, my friend, especially if you're one of my paid up "Colinketeers" (now only £4.99 monthly, incidentally - just saying!!!). But sometimes these restaurant "insta" pics are disappointing, though, especially if the reaction in terms of number of 'likes' is below par.

flashback to 2019: my medium-to-long-suffering wife

Lois (73) in one of my early Instagram 'posts'

There was no problem, incidentally with that "insta" photo above of my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois, and it got, like, a billion 'likes' (!), but some of my others have fallen flat, and I'd like to know why. (postcards only!).

Sometimes it's because there isn't an identifiable 'celeb' in the background, there's no doubt about that. And if there is one, you may find later that in your excitement to take a picture, you've forgotten to include much of either yourself or your food - a common 'rookie error' (!), like our daughter Alison, when she found that heartthrob Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen was sitting behind her group of friends in a Copenhagen restaurant during her time there with husband Ed and family (2012-2019).

flashback to 2017: our daughter Alison, then a Copenhagen resident,

posts this pic on "insta" before realising that she's only got an eye

and a bit of her forehead into shot, and her food is nowhere to be seen (!)

Usually however, it's the food that you've ordered that comes in for criticism, like this one of me, also taken on Valentine's Day 2020. I can't remember what it was, even with the photo as a 'memory-jogger', but it looks absolutely revolting, doesn't it, and my 'legion' of "insta" followers has never let me forget it !!!!

flashback to Valentine's Day 2020 at

The King's Arms, Prestbury,

and my least-'liked' 'insta'-dish ever !!!

And the worst thing is that, if the pic of your food turns out to be disappointing, most restaurants won't let you change your mind and order a different menu item, at least not without paying for it (!).

A pity.

What restaurants should offer - and it seems obvious to me now - is "fitting rooms" where you can try out a meal in front of a mirror, before making your choice. They should take their cue from M&S Foods who are now offering a similar service to grocery-shoppers, according to this morning's Onion News.

It's a small step, but going in the right direction at least, Lois and I feel!

[That's enough whimsy! - Ed]

Well, as it turns out, Lois and I spend most of our morning within about 5 inches of each other (!), crammed into cramped little fitting rooms, looking at mirrors, but this time it's more of a "vanilla" fitting-room experience, with Lois trying on skirts and dresses. Due to our new healthy life-style of exercise and 'low-everything' food, she's dropped a dress size - and her skirts also have been "dropping off her" (no pun intended!!!) due to her reduced waist measurement - only in the house, not in public fortunately!

Since January we've been living in quiet, rural, semi-leafy little village of Liphook, Hampshire, which boasts not one single solitary clothes shop, so today we're "hitting" the High Street dress shops in nearby Petersfield.

It's our first real chance to sample the "small-to-medium-town" delights and fleshpots of Petersfield (pop: 15,000) and it's got some quaint little old-looking buildings and blue plaques galore, I can exclusively reveal.

some of the fleshpots of Petersfield, Hampshire (pop: 15,000)

You may think it looks "nothing special" from the photos above, but the town certainly caught the eye of Henry V back in 1415, and some good experience or other - possibly in a fitting-room with his current "squeeze" (!), caused him to exempt the town's citizens from lots of his "stealth taxes", his this-ages and that-ages: stallage, picage, pannage, murage, and pontage. What a crazy world they lived in, n those far-off days!!!!

Petersfield's popular Swan Street car park

We unfortunately only booked 2 hours for our car in the town's popular "Swan Street" car-park, and that 2-hour ticket turned out to be woefully inadequate. Our plan was for 30 minutes max dress-shopping, and then 1.5 hours at Lois's church's "drop in centre" in a community hall - her church holds "drop-in" sessions on the first Saturday of every month, offering coffee and cake and some of the church's pamphlets to read, or church-members to chat to, that kind of thing. The dress shopping, however, turned out to take three times longer than expected, so in the end there was only time for 30 minutes at the community centre - what madness !!!!

[Is that all you two "noggins" have done today, Colin, a bit of dress shopping? - Ed]

Well no, seeing as how you're asking (!), no, absolutely not!!! We also got online and managed to order a "Moonpig" Mother's Day card for our daughter Sarah, who moved to Perth, Australia in September 2024, with husband Francis and their 11-year-old twins Lily and Jessica. It'll be posted somewhere else in Australia, on the east coast probably, and delivery to Sarah in Perth is guaranteed before Australian Mother's Day next Sunday, May 11th.

Yes, Australia celebrates Mother's Day on May 11th, would you believe - like almost every other country in the world, apart from the UK, Nigeria and, like, a billion (more, probably!) of our still-remaining "dependencies" like Gibraltar etc.

the UK and its still-remaining dependencies

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

[That's enough 'crazy' for today! - Ed]

Incidentally we learnt earlier today that the good citizens and 'burgers, burgesses etc' of Petersfield are, since 1415, happily exempt from paying the Government's "picage" taxes, amongst others.

It's a common misconception that picage is a tax on pikes - those long thin 'pointy' sticks that medieval soldiers used to carry. It's actually, however, a tax on having and running a market-stall: it's thought to be related to the word 'pitch' in the sense of a place you set yourself up in for selling things, perhaps on the street.

As far as Lois and I know, there is no tax on owning, or carrying, a pike, one of those long thin 'pointy' sticks that medieval soldiers used to carry, but which now have been more or less 100% superseded by more modern weapons in today's British Army.

In tonight's episode of the BBC's new historical series "The Hairy Bikers' Pubs That Built Britain, we discover a bit more about pikes and pikemen, which is nice.

Lois and I didn't know that the job of a 'pikeman' in historical eras was, first and foremost, to protect the musketeers, who took so long to reload that they were sitting ducks for the enemy's musketeers. What madness, wasn't it !!!

And who knew that these pikes were 16 foot long, and that the 'pikemen' 'wielding' them were probably drunk out of their minds, so you had to watch out. Better not to get too near one only to feel a "poke with a pike", that's what Lois and I think, call us "risk-averse" if you like haha!!!!